


Out of the Dead Land

by ecphrasis



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24299803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecphrasis/pseuds/ecphrasis
Summary: Elrond makes one final ride around his holdings.
Relationships: Celebrían/Elrond Peredhel
Comments: 17
Kudos: 50





	Out of the Dead Land

** Out of the Dead Land **

I sat upon the shore  
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me.  
Shall I at least set my lands in order? _  
__ The Waste Land _ by T.S. Eliot

Like a millstone churning wheat to flour, the long years have ground him down to dust.

Elrond accepts no help from the groom, who stands willing to curry and saddle his horse. He is aware that he makes his servants uneasy when he performs their labors, that they far prefer to tend to him and nurture him as a parent nurtures their child, but on this, his final ride around his holdings, he insists on saddling his own horse.

He knows time slips away like water through his fingers, but still he tries to make it last. He brushes his horse’s coat until it gleams in the sunlight; he cleans stones from his horse’s hooves and trims the stallion’s forelocks, he braids his horse’s mane in the elaborate seven-strand pattern of the sons of Fëanor, and he tightens and retightens his horse’s girth. 

Still, he cannot make himself mount up. The hour is long past dawn when he finally can find no more excuse for delay, and he lifts himself easily onto his stallion’s back, and he urges his destrier out of the stables, down into the city, and between the gates that have stood open for four years, and out into his lands. He guides the horse with his knees, his hands relaxed on the reins. The world is empty of elves, and his city is no different. Only a few faint voices rise on the wind, and the smoke of a single chimney stands against the blue of the morning sky like the stigma of ash against a fine woolen cloak.

His horse lengthens its pace from a steady trot to a swift canter as they move between two fallow fields, the one on his right once a vineyard, the one on his left, home to three grains, depending on the season. He has not had a harvest in two years, not since the majority of his people left, and took their labor and their needs with them. The few who remain have survived off of ancient stores, and fish from the river, and game from the mountains. From the corner of his eye, Elrond sees a vine grown to wood, and he forces his horse to a halt, breaking the smooth cadence of his stride, tempted to trim it back, to cut away the overgrowth-

but there will never be anyone to harvest the grapes that may flourish due to his tending. 

He spurs his horse again, then stops again, and then he slips from his high saddle and blunders across the overgrown fence, and he kneels before the vine and he strips away the greenness gone to overgrowth, he peels back the plant until it is no longer incapable of fruiting, he leaves one vine in a whole field of them capable of producing fine grapes. Perhaps later this summer a traveler will come upon it, weary and wasted, and be rejuvenated by the sweet taste of ripe grapes, and he will think to himself, here was the seat of Elrond of Imladris, here stood the last homely house east of the sea. Even now, with elves all but vanished from the land, famed elven hospitality still sates my mortal needs.

Elrond mounts his horse again and settles himself into an easy, earth-devouring canter. They come to a stream, and he permits his horse to sate his thirst. The fields give way to farther fields, and then to the orchards. These too have been without tending, and the neatly trimmed trees have begun the long, slow process of reverting to wilderness. The fruits on their boughs are still abundant, generous, but the absence of sentries and watchmen has allowed mountain deer to come down from the high fells and pick through the fruits, feasting themselves on the unripe fruits. As he passes beneath the rows of tall apple-trees, he spots a doe and her half-grown fawn nosing at last autumn’s windfall. 

The mother shepherds her offspring away from him, leaping lightly through the dappled shadows, blending into the shade until their absence is the only reminder of their presence, a hole in the world where two living hearts once beat. He thinks of Arwen, crowned in Gondor, dressed in the finest mortal robes, each day growing rounder with the promise of a child. 

She’d learned to talk very late, she hadn’t said a single word until she was almost seven. He’d been concerned, he’d tried to coax words from her, dandling his youngest child, his only daughter, on his knee at dinnertime, and pressing her head to his chest before bed. During the high, holy feasts he’d cut meat into portions small enough for her to swallow, he’d given her little sips from his lord’s cup, filled with milk instead of wine, just for her. Celebrían had never worried about her slow speech, she’d laughed off his concerns and promised that when Arwen wished to talk, she would. 

He’d borne his daughter on his back through the flowering gardens, and pointed out the different, vibrant flowers to her, and told her their names, in Sindarin, in Quenya. He’d taught her the slow patience of immortality, he’d shown her how to sit still before a bud, and, over the course of a whole day, watch it open to the sun. When she was six, he’d let her have a kitten from the stables, and he’d helped her to feed the little beast by dipping a rag in mare’s milk and pressing it into its pink, mewling maw.

And then one day, as he held her half-asleep on his lap, reading reports from the east, learning of his brother’s lineage, she’d pointed to the seal of Gondolin, the tree and stars, Isildur’s sigil, and she’d asked, in clear, unhurried Sindarin, “Ada, what’s this?” And he’d told her, told her stories of his brother, of his kin, and he’d watched her eyes grow round with wonder, and he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t feared, that his words had ensnared her, that he’d introduced the prospect of mortality too young.

Elrond jumps his horse over a low stone wall, and finds himself finally in the great wide plains, where formerly large herds of cattle grazed, and where now only a few scattered horses pick through green summer grass. He’d given all his vast herds to Gondor, as he had no more need of them. The summer crickets were chirruping loudly, and the birds in their ground-burrows chirruped to each other. He felt his horse’s lengthening gait and gave him his head. The stallion’s powerful muscles bunched beneath him, and they took off at an impossibly swift gallop, tearing across the bare fields, the fruitless grass, the useless land. He hadn’t sent a patrol out here in years, he had no reason to fear orcs, or raiding men. 

He has nothing left to steal, no cows to snatch away, no bleating sheep to protect from wolves, no goats to spare from mountain bears, no chickens to save from glistening fox teeth. A man with nothing has no enemies.

He rides out the great circle of the fields, along the spot where his ancient boundary once melded his power with his land. It is now little more than a vibrant green line on the earth, and even that is fading. His ring, all but powerless, is little more than dead weight on his finger. He finds the stone boundary wall that separates grazing land from forest, and he urges his horse to leap over it. The stallion complies effortlessly, and he finds himself in the woods.

He’d taken Elladan and Elrohir for their first hunt in the hills beyond Imladris. He’d made them practice stringing and unstringing their bows for months, he’d forced them to pepper their little sackcloth targets with increasingly accurate arrows, he’d asked for fresh game from the cooks, and he’d shown his sons how to prepare a wild-caught hare or squirrel or ptarmigan for cooking. Finally, long before Celebrían thought them ready for the wilderness, when he himself still harbored deep uncertainties, old terrors, he’d told them to saddle their sure, stocky ponies, and prepare themselves for the hunt. 

He can still picture their faces, two twin images of pure joy and excitement, their hair, identical to his, held back from their eyes with twin straps of cured deerskin, their eyes somehow the exact middle color between his own grey and Celebrían’s bright blue. They had been slender children, willowy and lithe, their skin browned by long hours spend in the sunlight.

When he first lifted them, one and then the other, and held them to his chest, smelling their sweet scent and touching their button noses, when he held his squalling sons in his arms, his twins, his image mirrored in two identical faces, he’d felt himself grow soft and tender, gentle as a she-wolf who suckles her nursing young.

The sun shines through the trees as though through a green prism, and it casts green light and dark green shadows on the forest floor. The loam of past winters crunches thick underfoot, and he hears the forest creatures fleeing his horse’s light hoofbeats. The birds pause in their song, then sing anew. The insects around his face flutter away when he wafts them with his open hand, and then return. When he moves a branch to permit his passage, it springs back to its accustomed place. So it is to be an elf; to touch the world and not to change it, to make a passage, and to leave the path unaltered. He first found Imladris cozened by woods, surrounded on two sides by high mountains, by a river on the third, and vast, open plains on the fourth. He will leave his city as he found it, desolate of inhabitants, a wasteland.

He’d been running scared, running blind, sacked in the worst defeat of his life, keeping barely abreast of his pursuers, aware of the encroaching winter, the certainty of death, and of Gil-Galad’s ignorance of his situation. He’d been prepared to make a stand, to turn and face the army of orcs at his back, to sacrifice his life and the lives of every one of his servants, if only to pick the day and the hour of his death himself, when one of his scouts had reported a cleft in the valley, a hidden hole, a place easily defensible, sheltered from the high winds of winter, nourished by a swift river, surrounded by good land for hunting. They’d hidden themselves in the caves of the mountains, and carved tunnels between them.

That winter had been hard. No one starved to death, but they all came close. They boiled their shoe-leather and ate it, they slaughtered their horses and devoured them, but in springtime, Gil-Galad’s reinforcements found them, and when Gil-Galad himself eventually saw the camp, he asked Elrond if he would be willing to become an established lord, and not a war-envoy, and Elrond had agreed.

He’d always loved the woods. From the first time he’d ridden in them, he’d known them, he’d felt each rise or hillock or slight valley or babbling stream before he came upon them, he could predict where the oaks and aspens would grow, and where the pines would fall, and where the birds would nest in springtime. He’d written a long poem detailing the valley’s bitter winters, its humid summers, its fertile springs and its flame-colored autumns; he’d refused recall to Eregion, he’d made a home for himself in amongst the mountains, and now-

He comes out above the tree line and found himself on the long, steep climb up to the overlook, from whence he could behold all his small realm. His stallion is lagging, and he realizes with a pang of guilt that it is late in the afternoon, and except for a brief stop for water in the vineyards, he’d pushed his horse hard, without rest. But they are close to the summit, where a small stream flows, so he urges his steed onwards, and by sunset, they reach the peak. He allows his horse to drink; he removes its bridle to permit grazing. 

He cannot force himself to turn around, to look.

The moon is rising; he can feel its strong silver weight at his back, calling him. This is his final night in Imladris. Will he never again look over his city in the moonlight? Will he never see the tall white towers, luminescent in the reflected silver of the moon? Will he never watch the fires light one by one, or hear the calls of the guards at a distance? He built this city from rock, he called life from dead stone, he turned a place of dust and wilderness into a sanctuary. Before he flees west, before he takes the Sea-Road home, he must behold his kingdom.

He steps forward. He stands at the edge of the cliff face, and he looks down.

The river overflows the edge of the cliff face, and crashes down, scattered into mist by the height and the sudden, rushing leap into open air. Individual droplets catch and scatter starlight, as though they themselves were tiny stars brought down to earth. A scant rainbow shone, flickering in and out of his vision as the light of the moon filtered over it. 

He’d brought his wife to this same overlook, with the same waxing moon suspended in the sky. He’d held her hand and half carried her to stand where he now stands alone. He’d helped her turn her gaze downwards, to the city.

The white spires of the lofty buildings lay dark beneath his sight. The night he had bidden farewell to Celebrían, every window had been lit by fire, and even next to the waterfall, they had heard the sound of singing, the long, soft lamentation of farewell. No music rose now; there were no tongues to sing. No harp struck through the evening air with clear-toned, vibrant melodies; no hand remained to draw them out. He had held Celebrían, dry-eyed and emotionless, withdrawn entirely into herself, and he had wept to bid farewell to her, to their life together.

The waterfall mists into the air, which mists into the darkened city, and Elrond realizes that his eyes are filled with tears. He pulls away from the ridge, he cannot bear to watch his city overcome by night; he cannot watch the slow progression of the moon, he cannot stand, impassive beneath the cool, distant light of the steadfast northern star. His knees buckle, his limbs drain all their strength into the earth. He claws at mud and dirt and loose summer grass, he tears it up by the handful, his chest aches as though he’d fallen from his horse and had the wind knocked from his lungs. He cannot breathe, it hurts to hold his breath. 

He has lived for more than seven thousand years. He has watched the stars above him alter in their courses; he has known the world before and after evil, he has always aided, always allied, always sided with his kin. He has fought more battles than most men have drawn breaths, he has served a king of every lineage, a lord of every noble house, he has gathered together the exiled and the homeless and made for them a refuge and a hiding place from terror and death. He has wed a woman in defiance of his fate, he has fathered children, he has raised them, he has raised a city at his back, and now, at the end of his life, he has nothing. He is no one. He belongs to a House so ancient, most elves would yoke it with the world of myth. His offspring have rejected the call West, Arwen forever, the twins for a long time yet. His wife he failed, his city he let slip away, his people he watched dissolve between his fingers, like a grain of salt cast into the ocean.

As the moon sets, Elrond mounts his horse and takes the short path down to Imladris.

In the morning, his groom will saddle his horse, and he will ride through the open gates of Imladris one final time. The trumpeter will call out his melody, the drums will answer with his meter, and his banner will be lowered from the high tower, and it will never be raised again. He will ride at the head of a short line of elves, the passengers who have secured seats on one of the last ships West. One more boat will remain, in dry-dock, hidden and secret, saved for his sons, for Celeborn, for those borne to the West who will not heed its calling. He will lead his people across a summer country, in the sunlight. They will sing their sacred hymns, and travel swiftly, avoiding the more populated areas. Those with remnant elf-blood in their veins will be drawn to watch their passage overland. Elrond will ride further west than he has been in millennia, he will pass through the gentle shire, and come at last to Círdan’s haven, and he will greet his kinsman and establish himself in the grey ship.

He will leave behind the world of men, of mortality, of his brother, of his daughter. He will travel under starlight, further and further West, until he sees a silver shore flying up to meet him. His city will crumble, his memory will fade, his lineage will disintegrate into myth. His daughter’s immortal body will fall prey to carrion. 

He can feel the weight of starlight on his back, but he cannot bring himself to lift his head. He is too weary, too overcome with agony. The long years have ground him down to dust.


End file.
